Mujo Delić recently shared his story of survival during the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. He is originally from Bratunac, and due to the circumstances of the war, he had to find salvation in the free territory of Srebrenica. However, not everything was as it seemed. He had to seek salvation through an impossible mission of breaking through the occupied territory to the free territory in Tuzla, 100 kilometers away.
In the attack on the “UN protected enclave” of Srebrenica in July 1995, carried out by units of the then Army of Republika Srpska under the command of Hague convict Ratko Mladić, more than eight thousand Bosniak men and boys were killed, and tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people were deported or forced to seek safety in the surrounding forests, looking for a way to free territory in the Tuzla area.
Below is his story:
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1992 year .
My father, mother, sisters, brother and I are watching the news, missiles are hitting cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Destruction, smoke, panic.
We look, but we don’t believe our eyes, all the time we think this will stop, it is impossible for there to be a war here.
Who will attack whom, we don’t even have any weapons.
The Serbian aggression against my Bratunac began, which was easy prey considering that it borders Serbia, so we had to seek safety overnight in the territory of Srebrenica, which was then a free territory.
The towns around Vlasenica, Cerska, Rogatica, Sapna, Zvornik, Konjević Polje fell day after day.
We learned quickly and realized that we would have to defend ourselves with all available means, bare-handed, against a “heavily armed enemy,” who was many times superior in both manpower and heavy weaponry.
This superiority came from the Yugoslav Army, which was then one of the most powerful in Europe. That army was taken over overnight by the Serbian regime under the control of Slobodan Milošević, and all of its equipment was placed on the side of the Serbian people.
At the same time, we Bosnians and Herzegovinians who were attacked were deprived of any defense assistance. There was even a UN embargo on the import of weapons into Bosnia and Herzegovina, using it as an excuse to prevent war. In reality, this served us Bosniaks to the Milosevic regime for slaughter.
I have never heard anywhere of any regret for such decisions. And I’d love to hear.
Even in the end, some judges politically ruled that Serbia did not commit aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
That genocide was not committed in the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but only in Srebrenica.
Even the birds on the branch know that Serbia committed aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbia not only failed to prevent genocide in the territory of Srebrenica, but also planned and carried it out.
Somehow, we, the exiles and citizens of Srebrenica, organized some kind of primitive defense in and around Srebrenica. We somehow defended Srebrenica, even though we were completely occupied from all sides and very far from free territory.
But what a life, 40 thousand people in a place where once a few thousand lived. There is no electricity, no water, no bread, no school, no work, no bathing, no brushing teeth, no washing, no shops, no heating. A true ghetto, humiliation in every sense of the word. At that time, the UN sometimes used to send us food packages by plane, but it was not even a fraction of our needs.
We used to wait for days for that help to be thrown at us, I’ve only experienced that happiness once in four years. But the mere hope that help would come was enough for us to survive and endure. We were bombed every day, both from the air and from the ground. We used to count hundreds of missiles a day. There wasn’t a building that wasn’t hit at least 50 times.
Beginning of 1993.
One of the countless Serbian offensives on Srebrenica begins. 20 thousand Serbian soldiers armed to the teeth and 1000 tanks. We defend with hunting rifles, rifles made from water pipes and some of the weapons we stole from the enemy by sneaking into their trenches. Still no sign of any help in the way of weapons and medical equipment.
I was wounded in the leg. It hurts, I’m moaning inside, I want to burst but I can’t stop helping my comrades. My comrades noticed and quickly called a doctor who didn’t have any equipment. With a knitting needle, and without any anesthesia, the doctor somehow healed my wound and saved my leg. That was nothing compared to the wounds other defenders had.
One moment in particular is woven into my memory and I will never forget it. A friend of mine was so wounded that his leg had to be amputated. Infection, worms coming out of the leg. The ten of us held him and cried as he wailed as the doctor cut off his leg with a saw.
- April 1993.
The UN declares Srebrenica a safe zone. What does that mean now? The city is being taken over by UN forces who, with the help of NATO, will protect us from Serbian attacks.
- May 1993.
The UN disarmament of Srebrenica was completed. Even the few primitive weapons from the defenders of Srebrenica were taken away, and since then Srebrenica has placed all its hopes in the UN.
From this perspective, it was a prelude to a planned and agreed-upon genocide. No one can convince me that it wasn’t. This is not some conspiracy theory, but the only explanation when you see what happened later and how the UN acted.
Beginning of July 1995.
The Serbian aggressor army, led by the executioner Mladić, is not giving up on Srebrenica. Despite its status as a protected area, it is launching a new offensive, this time under the code name “Krivaja 95”. All this in the presence of the UN, which had prevented even theoretical defense by disarming it two years earlier.
The UN didn’t even blink, and Mladić brutally liquidated more than 8,000 people with bare hands in a few days. 8000 people! God, how many people are dear. Do you people know just how much logistics is needed to kill 8000 people in a couple of days, bury them, clean up the blood behind them and cover the trail.
I know that in war, evidence is easily removed, but I wonder how many people from the Srebrenica area were not involved in that operation. May God help those people every time they go to bed.
- July 1995.
Knowing what awaits us, we embark on an almost impossible mission of breaking through occupied territory towards the free territory in Tuzla, 100 kilometers away.
The Serbian army had an open area and they shot us like rabbits, and the forest was full of rabbits. The real manhunt begins.
- July 1995
Ambush. Panic. Mass lectures. Mass murders. Bodies of the murdered all around us. Some of us stay alive.
Exhausted and wounded, we arrive at the water source. A crowd of people rush to the source to drink the water and die on the spot. The water is poisoned.
On the way through the dense forest we come across some canisters with water. The people are frantic and have difficulty understanding that canisters do not grow on trees. Anyone who drinks water from a canister will have their face distorted within a few moments and start to rage. Those who had guns, and get drunk, start shooting uncontrollably.
Battle poisons are thrown around the column. The poisons took over the people so that no one could control them anymore.
There were situations when one person shouted to surrender, and 100 others followed. We later found these poor people in mass graves.
The Serbian army is fraudulently presenting itself over a megaphone as one of our former commanders and calling people to come down from the forest. They are constantly shooting at us. There are more and more wounded and dead.
To this day, I still remember calls from wounded neighbors, comrades who are desperately asking for help. The worst thing for me was when dozens of wounded around the five of us were asking for help, and we had to choose only the five who had the best chance of survival, to carry them on our backs.
Old men often stayed with their sons because they could not carry them, so they stayed to die together.
I remember one situation when a father was carrying his fifteen-year-old son without a single leg. He asked for help to bandage his son. My friend swaddled his dead son. We didn’t have the strength to tell him he was dead. His father told him son, grandma will not leave you.
For 5 days I wandered in the forests, eating leaves and drinking dew from the leaves, I was not allowed to drink water from the stream.
July 16, 1995.
A few of us, sticking together, got within 100 meters of the last Serbian line. To have any chance of crossing into free territory, we had to face an enemy unit in a single trench.
We had one hand grenade with us. They asked me to fire a grenade into the trench. I shot and missed. At that moment, I was praying to God that they would shoot me and that I would die on the spot. It’s over, there’s no escape for us.
I felt immense guilt for blowing away our last chance.
At that time, probably hearing that something was happening, a unit with only about 20 fighters led by Naser Orić from the free territory broke through the Serbian line and we found ourselves in the free territory.
July 11, 2020.
To this day, we continue to see the denial of genocide, the victorious celebrations of Serbian politicians in ethnically cleansed Srebrenica and the entire Podrinje region, as well as the unfounded court trials and persecution of the few survivors of Srebrenica.
Well, please look, based on unfounded evidence, charges are brought against the defense commander Naser Orić, who is finally acquitted by the Hague Tribunal, and he then experiences a new series of persecutions from the so-called progressive regime in Serbia.
Serbia, as well as its progressive and unprogressive politicians, are genocide deniers and desperate to equalize blame. Knowing their mentality, I am not surprised by this, but I am pained by this enormous tolerance on the part of the international community.
My friends, in closing, I’ll just tell you that I’ll never forget that orange that someone gave me right after my breakthrough. The taste of that orange still lingers to this day.
Promote peace in the world, prevent wars and injustice. Donate your orange to someone who needs it.
BH UK Network
